The major aim of this study is to compile knowledge about animation education in primary education, and in this paper I surveyed how animation subjects were treated in school textbooks for drawing and manual arts in elementary education in Japan. In total I surveyed 677 textbooks published from1955 to 2015 and identified 25 animation subjects, which I divided into four periods of time for comparison. This diachronic research reveals the origin and the changes of the animation subject in the field. In addition, I found two aspects of educational meaning for animation subjects in the context of drawing and manual arts, namely “education for visual communications” and “experiential education.”